Although to some extent overshadowed by
Newgrange
Megalithic Tomb - one of the most famous megaliths
of the European Neolithic - the burial monument at Knowth is the largest
of all passage tombs located within the 8-square mile UNESCO World Heritage
site in the valley of the River Boyne, County
Meath, Ireland. Estimated to contain more than 25 percent of all megalithic
art produced in Western Europe, the Knowth complex contains one large
mound (Site 1) plus seventeen satellite tombs. The Great Mound was constructed
after Newgrange but before Dowth, sometime during the period 2500-2000
BCE. About 40-feet in height and 220-feet in diameter, and covering more
than a hectare, it has two passages (with entrances on opposite sides,
east and west), each leading to a separate cruciform burial chamber, with
a corbelled roof like the one at Newgrange. The eastern passage is more
that 132-feet long, which makes it the longest megalithic passage in Western
Europe. The Mound is encircled by 124 oblong kerbstones, each about 8
feet in length, many of which are decorated with prehistoric
abstract signs, including numerous petroglyphs
with spiral designs.

Aerial View of the Knowth Passage
Tomb. [Credit: Michael Fox]

Architecture
and Art

A brief archeological investigation of
the Knowth monument was carried out in 1941 by Professor Macallister.
However, very little was gleaned about the passage tomb or its prehistoric
art, and it wasn't until 1962 that major excavations commenced under
the direction of Professor George Eogan of University College Dublin.
Eogan and his team began by excavating the Great Mound as well as the
smaller surrounding mounds. Five years later they uncovered the first
passage and burial chamber. Later excavations revealed the second passage,
plus a collection of decorated kerbstones - one of the greatest caches
of Western European Neolithic art - which
were positioned in such a way that their engravings were hidden from sight.
Found especially on stones near the entrances to the passages, most of
the decorative art consisted
of spirals, lozenges, crescents and wavy lines, together with lunar maps
and an image of a sundial or lunar calendar. Using these and other discoveries,
Eogan gradually built up a picture of how Knowth evolved as a ceremonial
necropolis.

Some issues, however, remain a mystery.
For example, at first glance, the east-west alignment of the underground
passages at Knowth, suggests that they were deliberately positioned to
line up with the equinoxes. If so, this design no longer applies: not
only have the original entrances to the passages been altered, rendering
it impossible to establish if an alignment existed in the first place,
but also a concrete slab wall was erected across the mounds west entrance,
preventing any further investigation into the matter. For more about research
into alignments and archeoastronomy at Knowth, see The Stars and the
Stones: Ancient Art and Astronomy in Ireland (1983) by Martin Brennan.

Origins

The Neolithic era in Ireland ran from about
4000 BCE to 2000 BCE. During this time, the early Boyne Valley farmers
cleared the area of forests in order to farm cereals and graze their animals.
The fertility of the soil provided the people with sufficient resources
to organize themselves into social groups and create a number of megalithic
tombs. In due course the tombs of Brugh na Boinne - comprising
the three mounds of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth plus satellite graves
(many of which appear in the earliest Irish literature) - evolved into
the most famous megalithic cemetery complex in Ireland. It is believed
that the Knowth tombs took more than 30 years to complete.

Construction

Knowth's two cruciform chambers were topped
with corbelled roofs supported by lintels placed across wall orthostats.
The roof stones of the chambers were arranged in a series of overlapping
circular patterns, and then covered by layers of clay, sod, soil and shale,
as were the two passages. The entire mound was then ringed with large
kerbstones, weighing up to four tons. To maintain the interior in a dry
condition, drainage channels were cut into the roof. In the opinion of
scholars, the passage graves at Knowth and Newgrange constitute one of
the greatest achievements of Neolithic architecture.
In particular, the design demonstrates a keen awareness of load stress,
geology and engineering abilities, while the overall expenditure of resources
is evidence of a powerful belief in the hereafter. Knowth's passage graves
should therefore be seen as extremely important cultural centres, with
great religious and ceremonial significance. This last is supported by
the fact that the number of individuals buried in the tombs was relatively
small, showing that the monument possessed mostly ceremonial or ritualistic
value, possibly associated in part with the vernal equinox (the start
of the growing season), and the autumnal equinox (autumn harvest time),
with which the monument may have been aligned.

Megalithic
Engravings

According to Professors Kinnes and Eogan,
Europe's greatest concentration of megalithic art is found at Knowth -
a total of 250 ornamented stones, including internal orthostats, sills,
capstones and external kerbstones. This unique accumulation of Stone
Age art consists mainly of abstract geometrical engravings, created
by chisels and punch stone tools, or the sharp edge of probably flint
or obsidian implement. In addition to these incised pictographs,
ther deeper works include low relief
sculpture, usually of figurative images. Slab surfaces were often
smoothed with hammers.

Interpretation
of Knowth's Rock Art

Most motifs were symbolic, religious or
ritualistic - perhaps due to the fact that the abundance of food in the
Boyne valley meant that people could look beyond their daily survival
to consider deeper questions concerning life and the afterlife. The use
of decorative art thus provided a
permanent visual confirmation (and iconography) of their ideology, although
few scholars agree on a precise interpretation, except that a huge amount
of time, effort, and skill was involved in the creation of this art, which
shows how important it was.

Some have suggested that the prehistoric
rock engravings on the stones are essentially anthropomorphic, with
spirals representing eyes of gods associated with places of burial. Others
attribute these Neolithic symbols to a sun-based religion. Yet others
believe that the act of engraving was the primary ritual, not the images
themselves.

Some anthropologists believe that Knowth's
geometric and phosphene-type images were created by individual artists
experiencing altered states of consciousness. This theory suggests that
through certain Shamanistic rituals (very common among primitive cultures)
- involving prolonged drumming, chanting, fasting, consumption of hallucinatory
plants, and so on - individuals can enter an altered state of consciousness,
during which they tend to create certain types of abstract shapes. A process
not unlike doodlings made by people while speaking on the telephone -
which, incidentally, closely resemble the dots, circles, triangles, spirals,
wavy lines and strange grid marks that we see in megalithic tomb art.

Meantime, Martin Brennan believes that
the rock art at Knowth has a lunar or astronomical
basis. In support of this, he identifies numerous associations between
Knowth's megaliths and the moon and stars. These include maps of the moon,
as well as calendars based on the rhythm and positions of the sun, moon,
and stars, possibly to help regulate agricultural activities such as planting,
harvesting, and moving of domestic animals.

In summary, Knowth's ancient
art was created by engravers and sculptors from a prosperous culture,
capable of complex thought, and which possessed the resources, organization
and value-system to create sophisticated, lunar-related funerary monuments.

Art of the Neolithic

If Paleolithic
art is defined by ivory carving, the mysterious "venus
figurines" and parietal cave painting,
Neolithic artists are mainly associated with ceramic
art (pottery), textile art (weaving) and megalithic rock art. The
oldest art involving megalithic carving is
to be found at Gobekli Tepe in southeastern
Turkey. Dating to as early as 9000 BCE, it consists of bas-relief carvings
and numerous stone engravings. Ancient Egyptian
architecture, in the form of Egyptian
pyramids, is another major example of Neolithic-era megaliths. Other
important Neolithic sites include Catal Huyuk (c.6100 BCE), Gavrinis (c.3500
BCE), Zuschen Tomb (c.3300 BCE), Newgrange (c.3100 BCE) and Stonehenge
(c.2600 BCE). As the Neolithic entered the Bronze
Age, precious metalwork came to the fore, in the form of bronze
sculpture such as the sensational figurine known as the The Dancing
Girl of Mohenjo-Daro (c.2,500 BCE), from the Harappan culture of the
Indus Valley civilization, in India. Other masterpieces include the Maikop
Gold Bull (c.2,500 BCE) from the North Caucasus, and Ram
in a Thicket (c.2500 BCE) an exquisite statuette in gold-leaf,
copper, lapis lazuli, and red limestone from Ur in Mesopotamia (present
day Iraq).

 For more about artifacts from the
Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic, see: Earliest
Art.
 For information about prehistoric artworks, see: Homepage.